Mac OS X: When you find an image you find particularly inspiring, you often want to save it. If you save a lot of these images, they can be hard to sort through and find as needed. That's where Sparkbox can help. It's a repository for your creative inspiration.

UPDATE: Sparkbox was free when this post was written but it is now $20. Although this is still half the cost of its primary competition, LittleSnapper, I felt it made a great free alternative but not a cheaper one. Maybe if the cost were trivial it would be a different story, but the app is still so new and lacking a few important things (see below for details) that it doesn't warrant a $20 purchase. Sparkbox has a ways to go before it can try and justify that price point.

At first glance, Sparkbox will seem very similar to LittleSnapper, which is a screenshot tool that helps you save any clippings in a nicely-designed app for later use. LittleSnapper also focuses on clipping anything that inspires you creatively. The apps are very similar, with a few feature differences, but probably the most noticeable difference is the price. LittleSnapper will cost you $40 and Sparkbox will cost you nothing.

Sparkbox is new, however, and so it isn't quite as robust as LittleSnapper. It doesn't have a web app and it's feature set is pretty minimal. That said, it can still do a lot. It has a built-in browser for easily taking clippings from the web. You can also save screenshots directly through the app via a menubar item. You can't use keyboard shortcuts to do this, for some reason, but hopefully those will be added soon (as it is a trivial but important addition). You can also create collections, tag items, and even sort by color. It's a really handy app that's simple to use. It's kind of surprising that it's free. Sparkbox is definitely worth checking out and watching as it continues to grow.